House buying and what it means to me....

Let me share with you what I have experienced in our house buying process....

The term "short sale" is a misnomer... There is nothing "short" about it... Here is the lengthy process we have followed so far...

March 23 - submit offer on condo
March 24 - seller signs off on the offer, sends to bank to accept/decline/counter
March 24-April 9 - we hear NOTHING.... grrrr
April 9 - offer "expires" so we extend offer until following Friday, April 16
April 12 - receive "verbal" confirmation from the sellers agent that our offer is approved by the bank, merely waiting to receive the written confirmation
April 16 - offer "expires" but the bank still has 3 business days to put in writing that it does not accept the contract, otherwise contract stands and is in full effect
April 19-21 - we hear NOTHING
April 22 - still waiting, but have not withdrawn our offer which means the contract stands and any day now we should maybe/hopefully receive written confirmation from the lender

Is everyone now as thoroughly confused as I am? And also as completely annoyed with this process?? Goodness.. I know that John and I do not often take the easy way to do things... we just HAD to go out there to buy our first place and end up with a short sale that has a seller and 2 banks (luckily the 2nd bank apparently is not providing any resistance.. that we've heard of anyway)... but seriously, this is definitely trying my patience!

What are we doing now you might ask? Hoping and praying that the written acceptance of our offer comes through in the next couple of days... that we can schedule our inspection before we have to leave for Houston ... and that everything can close by June 1. That's a lot to ask for when the seller's agent won't respond to phone calls or emails, and just in general does not seem to want to communicate. Looking at this now, I feel it's pretty ridiculous that here it is actually a month later and we are still in essentially the same spot.

We have looked at our fair share of homes... there have been ones where we walked in and said "so not happening".... there have been ones where we would be happy, they're just not ideal... and then there is this condo. I'm working hard on not being TOO emotionally involved because I don't want to be disappointed that even after all this time we might end up needing to walk away.. but at the same time, it embodies what we have been looking for. There is some work to be done (update the kitchen and bath.. paint... typical stuff) but it would be fun to do it... the space is there, the layout is there. It's kind of what we have now in our apartment that we love. So until I feel as though this process is truly getting out of hand and ridiculously long, we will continue to keep our hopes up that everything will work out. No matter what, I know that it will work out as it should, it just might not be how I think it should work out right now. Ha.

So what does house buying mean to me? That apparently life has decided that I need to work a little bit more on my patience before letting me have what I want.... :)